Tabs

Friday, September 28, 2012

World War Z, a Review

Zombies are everywhere in pop culture these days.The undead presence is so proliferated that
its occurrence is no longer shocking to encounter in almost any given
genre.By and large I am an independent
soul, beating to the chords of my own guitar.I eschew trendiness like a kindergartner cringes at shots.For all practical purposes, whenever
something becomes coo, it is implicitly given a death sentence, because the
masses are always looking for something new and different.The zombie craze, I think, is finally nearing
the downward slope of its popularity.(But the question is can it remain dead?)

I’ve been a zombie fan for most of my life.My mom woke me up late one night—I was five—and
she wanted me to watch some old black & white movie with her cause she was
scared.This is one of my earliest memories.The film was “Night of the Living Dead.”To this day she is still terrified of that
movie.Apparently it entered into my young
psyche and I’ve been partial to the genre ever since.

When Max Brooks’ World
War Z came out I thought it sounded interesting.I’m a fan of the documentary style of
storytelling, and World War Z was
described as a series of interviews with survivors from the zombie war.But this was all during the hype of the
zombie craze, so I dropped the book on my TBR and went about my business (much
like I did with Pride & Prejudice& Zombies).However, I had to do
some traveling recently for work, so I decided to pick up the audio version of WWZ for the road.

To begin with, the audio book itself is a work of art.Because the book is a series of interviews
with various survivors, the audio production features a full cast of actors to
fill the bill.Max Brooks reads his own
part, playing the role of the interviewer.Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Rob Reiner, and several other voices play other
roles.This version won recognition and
an Audie award.This was truly a delight
to listen to.

However, one thing I did not notice until later, the audio
book was ABRIDGED!I am against abridged
books and cannot understand why they even exist.(If you have any good reasons why, do
tell.)But there was no going back, so I
pressed on.This is my only
disappointment with the audio book.

Plot-wise, Brooks establishes right up front that he’s presenting
these interviews as a follow-up to an official UN report.He traveled the world collecting facts and
figures and wound up gathering so much stuff that he was encouraged to write
the book.Most of the time Brooks stays
silent in order to allow the survivor to tell their story.He introduces each character and asks an
occasional question, but he has intentionally removed himself from the story.

The world is fascinating.Brooks interviews people from all over: China, Japan, Iceland, New York,
South Africa, Palestine, and more.The
stories are captivating to varying degrees, but all were engrossing enough that
I never grew bored.The interviews
provide some unique insight to how the zombie outbreak affected the entire
world, culturally, economically, mentally.They were handled well and entirely believable.

I don’t want to say anything about any of the individual
stories to remain spoiler free, but all were worth the read.If you can suspend your disbelief and have a
weakness for this type of storytelling, check out Max Brooks’ World War Z.I very much enjoyed it.The audio was excellent, just remember that
it is abridged.